how to organise a golf trip with your mates, without losing your mind.
The organiser’s guide
The short answer: make one person the organiser and let them decide. Lock the dates and budget early, and don’t count anyone as in until they’ve paid. Book the tee times and the beds first. Put everything in one place the group can check, so the group chat can go back to being about golf. Sort the format and handicaps before the first tee, and settle the money before everyone goes home.
That covers the planning. What most guides leave out is how much of the job is still there once the trip starts.
A typical group weekend took the organisers we interviewed somewhere between 15 and 40 hours of their own time in the lead up. Very little of that was the golf.
the job is bigger than the golf
Here’s what an organiser actually does for a four-day trip with sixteen players. Scoring is one line of it.
| Before the trip | On the trip | After the trip |
|---|---|---|
| Find dates that work for most | Answer “what time are we teeing off?” | Settle who owes who |
| Get people to commit, then chase the maybes | Handle the bloke who’s now not coming | Refund or re-sell a dropped-out seat |
| Collect deposits and balances | Move a tee time and tell the right people | Hand out prizes |
| Match bank transfers to names | Keep the groups and pairings straight | Send the photos |
| Collect handicaps, shirt sizes, dietary needs | Get sixteen people on the right bus | Remember it all for next year |
| Book tee times, rooms, transfers, dinners | Run the scoring and the leaderboard | |
| Work out rooming | Sort the bar tab and side bets | |
| Pick formats and the draw | ||
| Write the itinerary, then rewrite it |
One organiser described himself as “the guy at 10pm managing the WhatsApp and the spreadsheet.” That’s the job this page is about.
before the trip
1. make one person the organiser, and give them the final say
Every guide says this, and every organiser we spoke to agreed. Let the group have its say once, on a shortlist, then let the organiser decide. Democracy is how a trip ends up nowhere six months later. Find that benevolent dictator (more commonly referred to as the “trip captain”) and get them to do all the heavy lifting.
If the job is too big for one person, split it: someone on accommodation, someone on transport, someone on the golf. But one person makes the calls.
2. offer two or three weekends, with a deadline
“When works for everyone?” never finishes. Put up two or three options and a date to reply by, and go with the majority. Collect budgets privately, so nobody feels pushed into a number in front of the group.
3. treat “yeah, probably” as a no
This came up more than anything else in our interviews. People say yes, and then they don’t really commit. In one organiser’s words, “people say yes, but then they’re not really committing... two days before some people will pull out.”
What changes that is money. One group booked a free family house, drove instead of flying, and took no deposit. Six of the eleven dropped out. As another organiser put it, “once people book flights they’re coming.”
So even if you don’t have to pay the course or the accommodation up front, collect something from each player so they have some skin in the game. Plenty of organisers front the bookings and settle up afterwards, and that works too, as long as everyone has put something down first. Decide your rule before you ask, and put it in the first message: when money is due, what it covers, and what happens if someone drops out. A shared room gets expensive fast when one person pulls out and wants their money back.
Start with your core group. Get the three or four regulars locked in before you ask anyone else. Once they’re in, the rest tend to follow.
4. book the backbone first: tee times and beds
Group tee times and group accommodation go first, especially at popular courses. If the resort’s rooms unlock its best tee times, book the rooms first. Otherwise grab the tee times you can’t get elsewhere, then the beds near them. Transport and dinners come after. Leave room in the budget, 10 to 15 per cent, for the things nobody remembered.
More and more courses won’t take bookings more than 28 days out, which is awkward when flights and beds are already booked. Several organisers we spoke to watch for the morning a course releases its tee times and book the moment they open. If that’s you, set an alarm, and have a backup course in mind.
5. collect everyone’s details once
Handicaps, shirt sizes, dietary needs, flight times, who’s sharing a room. Ask once, in one place, against each player’s name. Twenty private messages copied into a spreadsheet is how things get missed.
6. sort the format and handicaps before you arrive
Agree the competition, the handicap rules and the side bets before the first tee. Mix the formats across the days so one bad hole doesn’t end someone’s trip: a Stableford round, an Ambrose, a team match. Work out the draw so everyone plays with someone new. And agree the stakes up front, so there’s no awkward “what are we playing for?” on the first tee.
7. put the whole trip in one place
The itinerary needs to be somewhere everyone can check without asking: tee times and groups, rooms, transfers and pick-up times, dinner bookings, the dress code, the meeting point, emergency contacts. Players want to know what time they’re teeing off and who with, not just the first tee time.
Keep it current. The trouble with a PDF or a spreadsheet isn’t that it’s wrong on day one, it’s that it changes twice and people keep reading the old one.
Keep the group chat for banter.
8. point everyone to one place, and keep it there
Resist sending the itinerary out again a week before. Every version you send is another copy someone will read by mistake on the Saturday morning. Keep one live version and tell people where it is: “everything’s on the trip page, and if anything changes, it changes there.”
A week out, confirm the bookings yourself and update that one place. The group checks it when they need to, and nobody is working from last month’s PDF.
on the trip
9. expect the questions anyway
Even with a perfect itinerary, someone will ask what time the bus is. The fewer places information lives, the fewer times you answer it. Put the common questions in writing where the itinerary is.
10. tell the right people when something changes
Tee times move and groups get reshuffled. The people it affects need to know that morning, not find out on the first tee.
11. don’t over-golf it
Two rounds a day sounds great in the group chat. By day three it doesn’t. Build in an afternoon off or a slow evening. The trips people talk about for years are rarely the ones with the most holes.
12. keep the scoring out of your hands
Live scoring and a leaderboard save the organiser adding up cards at the bar (or worse, stowed away in their hotel room), and they give the group something to watch between groups. That said, it isn’t everyone’s thing. One long-running group went back to paper because counting up the cards together in the evening was the best part of their day. Do what your group enjoys.
after the trip
13. settle up before everyone goes home
Side bets, the bar tab, the dinner someone put on their card. Split it against the same list of players and close it out on the last day. Money left hanging for weeks is how friendships get strained.
14. make it a tradition
The things groups talk about for years usually aren’t the scores. It’s the trophy that gets handed on and engraved, the winner’s jacket that has to be worn to dinner, and the last-place prize nobody wants. Plenty of groups have trip merch, whether that’s hats, towels or a shirt with the year on it. Some hold a results reveal at the final dinner instead of letting the leaderboard give it away. One group we spoke to photographed everyone collecting their prize haul after they got home and put it straight into the group chat.
Sort these early. Engraving and merch take weeks, and they’re the first thing to get forgotten.
15. keep the record for next year
Who came, what it cost, which courses were worth it, who won. Most of these trips happen again. We’ve spoken to groups that have run the same trip for 25 years, some of them still on the original spreadsheet. Next year is easier if this year is written down somewhere you can find it.
or hand it to a tour operator
Sometimes the right answer is to not organise it yourself. A golf tour operator is worth a look when the trip is overseas, when you want courses that are hard to book as a visitor, or when you’d rather play than run the trip.
A good operator books the courses and tee times, the hotels and transfers, and often caddies and dinners. On a hosted tour someone from the business travels with the group for the week. You pay for that, and you give up some say over the details, but the trip captain gets to be a player again.
Operators still have most of the jobs on this page to do, just on your behalf. It’s worth asking how they’ll keep your group informed during the week, and whether the itinerary, the draw and the results live somewhere your group can check. More on how operators run tours: golf tour operator software.
a first message you can copy
[Trip name] [year]: are you in?
[Destination], [dates], [number] rounds. About A$[amount] each, covering golf, accommodation and transport, with a buffer.
Reply by [date]. Only say yes if you’re definitely in.
A$[deposit] secures your spot, due by [date]. Balance by [date].
If you pull out after that, your deposit covers your share unless we fill your spot.
I’ll book everything once the deposits are in.
where an app helps, and where it doesn’t
Most apps built for golf trips are scoring apps, and there are plenty of good ones. Scoring is one line of the job. More on those: the best golf trip apps, compared.
Caddi was built for the whole job, from the first “who’s in?” to settling up on the way home, based on what these organisers told us.
Invite links show who’s opened, confirmed or pulled out. Players register, give their details and pay their share of the trip in one place, and the organiser can see who’s paid. The whole trip lives in one place: tee times, groups, rooms, transfers, dinners and FAQs, and players are notified when their tee time changes. Handicaps are worked out daily from each course’s rating and slope, using Golf Australia’s formula. The scoring and leaderboard run live, and expenses are split at the end.
It’s free to set up, and A$15 a player for the trip once you invite them in. Most organisers round up the per-head cost to cover it. As one put it, “on our trip that would be a rounding error.” What they get back is the hours they’d otherwise spend on admin, on the trip as well as before it.
If your group is four mates and a single round, you don’t need any of it. A group chat and a scorecard will do.
questions
What’s the hardest part of organising a golf trip?
Getting people to commit. In our interviews it came up more than anything else: people say yes, then pull out close to the date. Setting a deadline and a clear money rule up front is what helps most. It also helps to lock in your core group before inviting anyone else. Once the regulars are in, the rest tend to follow.
How long does it take to organise a golf trip?
The organisers we interviewed spent somewhere between 15 and 40 hours managing the planning and logistics leading up to a golf trip away, most of it on dates, commitment, money and logistics rather than the golf. The majority of these trip captains also suggested that there was at least 1 to 2 hours per day on the trip itself, answering questions, calling service providers, adjusting bookings and tallying the scores.
Should I take a deposit?
Yes, even a small one. It’s the simplest way to turn a maybe into a yes. Plenty of organisers front the bookings and settle up afterwards, but the ones with the fewest dropouts get something from every player first. State the rule in the first message.
What should I book first?
The tee times and accommodation, as soon as the dates are locked. If the accommodation unlocks better tee times, book it first.
How many people is right for a golf trip?
Any multiple of four makes tee times and pairings easier. Eight to sixteen is common. Logistics like cars and dinner tables get harder beyond about sixteen.
How do I stop the group chat taking over?
Put the itinerary, times and details somewhere everyone can check, and keep the chat for banter.
Do I need an app?
Not for a small group and one round. For a multi-day trip with eight or more people, an app that handles registration, payments and the itinerary as well as the scoring saves the organiser most of the time.